The West Australian economy is now the powerhouse of Australia, it's officially the most productive and fastest growing economy in the country. This is of course due to all the mining going on in the north and southeast.

It baffles me to think that with all the business to and from mainland China, why are there no direct flights to Shanghai or Beijing? Surely there is enough pax and freight demand with China being our number one customer and i'm sure people would prefer to travel direct rather than route through SIN, HKG, KUL, SYD etc.

How long before we see a Chinese carrier, or possibly QF/JQ (though I think sending JQ up to mainland China would be a serious mistake because of all the premium traffic) will break into the WA market?

There is insufficient demand for a non-stop service with the frequency that would make it competitive. A couple of flights a week would not be enough to suit the business travellers who demand flexibilitty and there is nowhere near enough demand for 5-7 flights per week. In the meantime airlines like SQ and CX offer excellent frequencies with good connection times so travellers are generally happy.

Flights to China from Australia have not been hugely successful. MEL is 4 times the size of PER but QF couldn't sustain direct services to PVG. Chinese airlines do operate from MEL and SYD but they tend to attract Chinese pax with Australians prefering to use more established airlines like QF, CX, MH or SQ.

Quoting Tullamarine (Reply 1):
Flights to China from Australia have not been hugely successful. MEL is 4 times the size of PER but QF couldn't sustain direct services to PVG. Chinese airlines do operate from MEL and SYD but they tend to attract Chinese pax with Australians prefering to use more established airlines like QF, CX, MH or SQ.

True, but I would think it wouldn't really have to do with the city size, moreso the economy. PER can sustain a service to Brunei and Tokyo whilst MEL can't. Also, PER-China is a market that has been unexplored in recent years and I would think somebody ought to give it a go, especially with the business demand.

Quoting Ben175 (Reply 3):True, but I would think it wouldn't really have to do with the city size, moreso the economy. PER can sustain a service to Brunei and Tokyo whilst MEL can't. Also, PER-China is a market that has been unexplored in recent years and I would think somebody ought to give it a go, especially with the business demand.

I thik that overall, China services might start over time into PER but the yields and the overall market demand would need to grow to allow it to be successful.

On your other point, MEL can sustain a NRT route but QF has focused more on via SYD than direct on the route.JL came out at the time with some harsh words against QF's decision to stop the non-stop MEL-NRT route, which they felt was a short sighted decision and led them to suggest they would look into taking on the route (their own financial position is such that they can not do so at the moment). The route kept dropping in frequency and therefore lost its competitive edge by the end.

In PER's case, it is geographically seperated and therefore can not be hubbed through SYD in the same way. The PER service to Japan really haven't been that good in their performance but are retained due to a need for connections from PER by QF.

To say that MEL can't sustain PVG or NRT is not entirely true and that in reality the only reason that the PVG flights were moved back to SYD were to strengthen the flight to daily from SYD. A plane utilisation and hub building reason, as QF in SYD does have trouble on its own with China services. Brunei is a hard one and even SYD could not susatin services. The PErR market is much less competitive and has allowed Royal Brunei to develop a market for its services. That market is much harder to carve out in SYD or MEL.

Demand for flights to China (from Perth) are increasing, and as a response QF are changing the flight times for PER-HKG from the end of March. Instead of a morning departure they will now depart late at night (an hour or two earlier than the present CX flight) that will connect to China flights from HKG a lot easier. The return HKG-PER flight will still be departing late at night, so it appears we may have an idle aircraft in PER for most of the day.

Congratulations... You've just discovered the reason Hub's are successful.

While a lot of minerals are sent to China... how many people are required to constantly be going back and forth to support that? Now compare that with say, a manufacturing business... like computer chips or something in IT and you start to see a different picture.

Next.. Economy Pax. You need them in substancial numbers to make the service work... even if they are basically just 'ballast' the way some American carriers look at them. There to enable either direct service or increased frequency that wouldn't be profitable on just the business PAX alone.

Go and look at a situation in the USA. If we look at NW's (now DL's) MSP hub, we see NW was able to sustain 3 A333s to AMS per day Plus 1 A330 to LHR. BA, or any other european carrier for that matter... couldn't sustain any. Why? Most of those PAX were connecting all over the place. MSP is a big city. Way way way bigger then PER. Huge manufacturing base there. Lots of scientific companies too. Like 3M for instance. All in all... a huge demand for business travel. So given that, you'd expect maybe one of the European carriers could support a link... particularly to say another huge manufacturing country like say... Germany?

Out of Perth, Singapore Airlines serves far more effectively this way.
It's the same out of Brisbane and Melbourne too. I for instance, need to make a quick trip to bangkok later in the year to celebrate a friends birthday. I'm in a Rush so I want to leave straight after work that evening, to maximise my time there. I've got a direct flight 5 days a week on thai... would seem like the logical option right? It's also the cheapest option...and it's on a really well decked out 772. Sounds good? I'm not picking it. Why? Because SIA has 3 flights per day, and they enable me to depart about midnight and get there shortly after breakfast and depart mid evening to come home and get back in time to go right into work. That also means forgoing oneworld milage, and it also means paying MORE to fly SIA. But I'm in a hurry... like most business travellers are going to be. In this case... the choice of departure times the hub offered me beat the direct flight. And I think you'll find that the case with the china flights too...even more so when you consider that if the PAX aren't headed to PVG (the logical place for the flight), and a huge chunk of them won't be, they'll have to connect inside china anyway. So one stop in singapore at the depature time you want is just as competitive as a direct service.

Quoting IndianicWorld (Reply 4):On your other point, MEL can sustain a NRT route but QF has focused more on via SYD than direct on the route.JL came out at the time with some harsh words against QF's decision to stop the non-stop MEL-NRT route, which they felt was a short sighted decision and led them to suggest they would look into taking on the route (their own financial position is such that they can not do so at the moment). The route kept dropping in frequency and therefore lost its competitive edge by the end.

In PER's case, it is geographically seperated and therefore can not be hubbed through SYD in the same way. The PER service to Japan really haven't been that good in their performance but are retained due to a need for connections from PER by QF.

I think we also need to remember that there was much backlash from local West Australian Tour operators and the Western Australian Government was bitterly disapointed in Qantas's decision to cancel services to Narita from Perth. That decision was reversed (obviously) Also I think the this service would do quite well frieght wise with a lot of fresh produce like fruit and seafood all fetching high prices in Japan.

Always thought the service should have been switched to an A332 (international) as opposed to the 767. Less seats on the A332 (international) better product consistancey and still great, actually greater frieght revenue potential. Plus the domestic crews that crew the PER - NRT - PER flights are trained on the A330

Quoting Lufthansa (Reply 7):Next.. Economy Pax. You need them in substancial numbers to make the service work... even if they are basically just 'ballast' the way some American carriers look at them. There to enable either direct service or increased frequency that wouldn't be profitable on just the business PAX alone.

We have them but they will only travel at certain times of the year. The group I am talking about are International Students. Curtin University has the highest porportion of International Students of any university in Australia (45%). Edcation is one of our biggest exports. Huge numbers are from China, India is booming but these students would only travel between semesters back home so we are talking Feb (after chinese new year), July (after after seemster 1 exams) August (in time for semester 2) and November (after semester 2 exams)

SQ and CX do offer good connection through their hubs.

I believe the majority of BI passengers from Perth are bound for London and not BWN itself. Cheap flights do make them fairly popular.

Quoting Fiscal (Reply 5):The return HKG-PER flight will still be departing late at night, so it appears we may have an idle aircraft in PER for most of the day.

Yikes another idle QF A330 in Perth. QF 78/77 already sits on the ground in Perth for about 12 hours. Maybe they could send to to ADL and back during the down time to get better utilisation, provide the first PER - ADL widebody service. Can't think of any where else to send it especially since QF have handed over the Bali Market to JQ. MEL prehaps?

The daily one way traffic from PER to PVG in the 12 months to Sep 09 is 19.
The daily one way traffic from PER to PEK in the 12 months to Sep 09 is 21.
The daily one way traffic from PER to BOM in the 12 months to Sep 09 is 16.

Don't think these traffic numbers can justify a direct service from PER to either of these cities!

Quoting Docpepz (Reply 9):the daily one way traffic from PER to PVG in the 12 months to Sep 09 is 19.
The daily one way traffic from PER to PEK in the 12 months to Sep 09 is 21.
The daily one way traffic from PER to BOM in the 12 months to Sep 09 is 16.

How and where can this kind of info be accessed? I assume that it's pretty commercially sensitive . . . ?

Quoting Pilotdude09 (Reply 2):Could say the same for India, India is a MAJOR player in the Gas/Ammonia/Iron Ore industry yet no direct link from WA. It's even tipped India's demand could overtake China in 5-10 years!

In fact, there are NO direct flights between India and Australia at all.

Quoting DavidByrne (Reply 10):How and where can this kind of info be accessed? I assume that it's pretty commercially sensitive . . .

There's a variety of software out there that can churn statistics. Software like IATA Airport IS, Sabre online tools etc. They're very expensive though and you've to pay a lot to subscribe to such systems.

Quoting Docpepz (Reply 9):The daily one way traffic from PER to PVG in the 12 months to Sep 09 is 19.
The daily one way traffic from PER to PEK in the 12 months to Sep 09 is 21.
The daily one way traffic from PER to BOM in the 12 months to Sep 09 is 16.

I think it is the marketing people and consultants for mining firms that need to travel often. Correct me if I am wrong, but most of the mining people working in WA would probably be the mining engineers themselves, or those providing support services to the mines, which is very location specific. The mining engineers or those who clean the mines won't need to make any trips to China!

BHP and Rio are not headquartered in WA. Eg BHP has a huge marketing office in Singapore and if I am not wrong, they also base a lot of their IT staff in Singapore. It would be these people who need to travel around the region a lot.

Singapore may have no natural resources to speak of, but it is the oil and gas trading hub for the region, with the consultants, traders, analysts etc for the resources industry who would need to travel to China, India, Indonesia etc, thus supporting air travel demand to these places.

An average of 84 pax a day had their final destination in China (2% of total intl departing pax from PER) and an average of 54 a day had their final destination in India (1.3% of total intl departing pax from PER)

Quoting Docpepz (Reply 17):An average of 84 pax a day had their final destination in China (2% of total intl departing pax from PER) and an average of 54 a day had their final destination in India (1.3% of total intl departing pax from PER)

So Together we've got half an A330 or 772 filled. That would assume they all flew on just one airline and on the same one daily flight. Therefore its obvious. There is no way in hell to serve this market without hubbing somewhere else.